Medical devices including clinical analyzers used in diagnostic laboratories use large amounts of consumable products such as chemical reagents, calibrators, and other fluids when performing immunological and/or biochemical tests on blood, urine, tissue, and other human body samples. The performance of these tests within a limited time is often critical to determining a person's health. The performance of these tests within allotted schedules are often impacted by the non-availability of the necessary reagents and other consumable products required for these tests. Hence, it is extremely important the laboratories have on hand the consumables required to perform the tests.
Some laboratories keep large amounts of consumables on hand and make periodic orders, such as monthly or bimonthly orders, to replenish their stock. This manner of tracking and ordering consumables may be extremely inefficient, as the laboratory may be faced with having a large stock of reagents that are only infrequently used, while the stock of the more frequently used reagents may be depleted before a new order is made, for example. Space constraints, reagent expiration, and cost balancing may not be adequately addressed by such an inventory management system.
Other laboratories utilize a manual inventory process in order to track the usage of consumables. This process involves at least one person checking to see what reagents are present on the shelves that are used to stock the reagent inventory. However, since this process requires manual verification and tracking of inventory, the process is labor-intensive and it is likely that mistakes will be made as to the quantities of reagents on hand. These mistakes are also more likely to occur when the laboratory is extremely busy, such that shortages of certain critical reagents will be overlooked. Such shortages of critical reagents will likely result in delays to critical tests.
While some laboratories automate their ordering process, prior art order management systems often automatically submit orders as each consumable reaches a threshold inventory level. Such an automated process results in successive small orders, inadequate to meet minimum cold storage transport requirements, and associated issues including time and expense submitting and tracking a large number of frequent orders. Further, these ordering processes do not allow for order scheduling, order planning, or cost balancing.
Thus, there exists a need in the art for a consumable inventory and order management system for medical devices providing for increased efficiency of notification of threshold consumable levels as well as automated ordering of consumable products to efficiently schedule purchases and balance spending.